Attention: Attentional Bias in Anxiety

Question 1

What is the attention bias in anxiety looking at?

Answer 1

• ability of a person to detect threat

- useful vs enhanced ability to detect threat = high lvls of anxiety

Question 2

What are the different sub-clinical variation of anxiety?

Answer 2

1. Trait A
   - extent to which a person is generally anxious
2. State A
   - lvls of anxiety in particular events
3. Clinical AD
   - high lvls of anxiety = debilitating = disorder = GAD OCD

Question 3

What are the different ways of studying anxiety?

Answer 3

1. Stroop task: Emotional
2. Dot-Probe task: words
3. Dot-Probe task: pictures
4. Visual search

Question 4

Describe the emotional stroop task, which is a method of studying anxiety.

Answer 4

Williams, Mathews + Macleod 1996
- name colour of threat related words
= slower response when threatening word = attentional bias

Question 5

The emotional stroop task has shown attentional bias in what disorders?

Answer 5

• PTSD
• OCD
• Social phobia
• Specific Phobias
  = snakes/ spiders

Question 6

What did Watts et al in 1986 find when he asked ppt to name the colour of threat related words VS spider related words?

Answer 6

• spider phobics = huge slower effects

- Emotional stroop = slightly slower

Question 7

Describe the Dot-Probe Task: words , which is a method of studying anxiety.

Answer 7

• look at central fixation
• word up or down
• dot up or down
  ** depending on which word you looked at, it will either take you loner or slower to look at dot
• dot same position as threat words = short
  = attentional bias

Question 8

What did MacLeod + Mathews 1988 find about those with low and high traits of anxiety when shown high or low exam threat words?

Answer 8

LOW ta =
- avoidance began low
- closer to exam = actively avoiding exam-threat related words
HIGH ta =
- began similar to low ta
- closer o exams = much faster response to exam-threat related words

Question 9

What did MacLeod + Mathews 1988 findings about exam threat related words in low and high ta show?

Answer 9

• Attentional bias is subject specific + interact with how relevant it is
• State + Trait anxiety, just because you are high on trait a doesn’t mean you will be show same attentional bias = depends on situation

Question 10

Describe the dot-probe task: pictures, which is a method of studying anxiety

Answer 10

• looking at central fixation
• image shown up or down
• dot shown up or down
  ** If dot and threatening picture show in same place = slower reaction time (since they are in the same place)
  = attentional bias

Question 11

What did Bradley, Mogg + Millar in 200 find when they used the dot-probe picture task to look at attention to different kinds of faces?

Answer 11

Threat, sad, happy, neutral
- those w/ high TRAIT anxiety showed greater affinity towards threat faces vs LOW
- Those with high trait anxiety, avoided the happy face
(difference v small tho)

Question 12

Describe the visual search method as a way of studying anxiety

Answer 12

How fast are they at detecting a target stimuli when it is surrounded by another neutral distractor or a threatening distractor

Question 13

What did Ohman et al in 2001 find when giving people the visual search method?

Answer 13

• people were faster to detect fear relevant stimuli

- Especially is they are fearful of them

Question 14

What are some theoretical issues of anxiety being explained as a result of an attentional bias?

Answer 14

1. Biases unconditional?
   - survival tool?
   - just drawn to threat?
2. methods here described all use task-relevant location
3. The role of relevance

Question 15

What is the problem with most of the methods used to study anxiety are task-relevant location?

Answer 15

• tasks give cues on where the threat would be = not reflective of rl
• you are already paying attention to location where you know might have a threatening words appear

Question 16

What did Lichtenstein - Vidne et al in 2012 + 17 find about the role of relevance and attentional biases?

Answer 16

when asked to focus on the middle column
- Non-clinical population
= emotional distractors only occur when searching for emotional pictures
= attentional bias only when threat relevant?
- patients for anxiety disorder
= emotional distraction occurred regardless of what they needed to search
= threat just more relevant for anxious individuals?

Question 17

What did Purkis, Lester + Feild in 2011 find about attentional biases being specific to anxiety?

Answer 17

Spider phobics found spider distracting
- Doctor Who fans found doctor who related things distracting
= just detecting threats relevant to us VS innate built in threat detector

Question 18

What have training biases shown about whether attentional biases is a cause of anxiety?

Answer 18

Training biases:
- probes consistently presented in the location of threat OR non-threat item
- novel material test induced bias
= training for threat words = faster detection of threat words
= training for neutral words = avoidance of threat words
** modest increase in anxiety reported after training

Question 19

What have training as a treatment shown about attentional biases being an effect of anxiety?

Answer 19

Training treatment:
- anxious ppl trained to avoid threat pic/words
- probs appear behind non-threat stimuli
= modest decrease in anxiety reported after training
- worth it?

Question 20

What does it mean when the avoidance bias is less than 0?

Answer 20

they were slower at detecting the THREAT word